My Mom Had Cows In Her Backyard...

Which wouldn't really be funny if she lived on a farm or anywhere else known to have cows, but my mom lives in Hawaii.

I talked to my mom on the phone the other day and this was the conversation.

Mom: Well I had an interesting night last night.

Me: Why?

Mom: Oh, it was about 1:00 in the morning, and I heard a noise in the backyard.

Me: Yah?

Mom: I listened for a bit and the noise kept getting closer and closer to the house.

Me: Oh, no (feeling scared)

Mom: I got out of bed and ran to the front of the house. I figured if it was a burglar trying to break in the back door, I could run out the front door and yell for help.

Me: Oh, jeeze

Mom: I stood by the front door and listened. There was still a lot of noise along the side of the house and I thought this was the loudest burglar I have ever heard.

Me: Yah, cuz you've heard a lot of burglars before.

Mom: (Laughs) Right, no I just figured he was being pretty loud for someone trying to break in.

Me: Right

Mom: So I quietly opened up the front door and walked out onto the lanai (that's what they call the patio in Hawaii). I hid on the linai for a little bit.

Me: (Imagining my poor mom scared and hiding on the patio.)

Mom: After a little while, I snuck around to the side of the house to see if I could see anything.

Me: Yah?

Mom: I looked around the corner and staring back at me was a....cow. He had horns, not the big guy's horns, but still he had horns.

Me: Oh, god, not again. (Yes, this has happened before)

Mom: So I whispered, "Go away," and waved my arms at him.

Me: (Laughs)

Mom: I wanted him to run out into the street so he wouldn't be on the side of the house anymore, but he just turned around and ran back into the backyard, scraping the side of the house with his horns.

Me: Oh, it was his horns that were making all the noise?

Mom: Well, yes, when he walked along the side of the house. The noise I first heard was of him leaning over the rock wall eating my tea plants and he knocked the wall over.

Needless to say, I was relieved that my mom didn't have a real burglar, just a burglar who wanted her tea plants. There is a field behind my mom's house. Every-so-often the owners of the field let their cows out of their normal area to graze this field. There is an ancient rock wall that lines the field, and that wall is the backyard wall for the houses that back up to the field. The wall is not grouted or concreted in, but rather stacked in a special "Hawaiian" way. So when the cows are sent out to this field, they sometimes eat the foliage of the residents. When they do that, they lean against the stacked wall and the wall falls over.

This is not the first time this has happened. When some of my mom's friends were staying at her house while she was here in CA, a bull knocked the wall over and grazed in the backyard for awhile. The people who own the cows have repaired the wall each time it happens. My mom will have to keep their number on speed dial. She had 7 more cows looking over the wall tonight.

I'm so glad it wasn't really a burglar.